Media365
The Taiwan Stock Exchange has become increasingly tied to American capital, as the global artificial intelligence boom drew a record amount of US investments into the island’s semiconductor-heavy equity market.
US investors currently hold a record US$668 billion worth of Taiwan equities – about 23 per cent of the exchange’s total market capitalisation – after funnelling roughly US$12 billion into the market in 2025, according to BNP Paribas, citing data from Treasury International Capital – a set of monthly and quarterly statistical reports from the US Treasury.
“US ownership of Taiwan equities has been slowly inching up over the last 10 years,” said William Bratton, head of cash equity research for Asia-Pacific at BNP Paribas. “It’s at record highs.”
A decade ago, US equity ownership stood at 13 per cent.
That reflected US investors’ interest in securing exposure to Taiwan’s cutting-edge semiconductor industry, which Bratton described as “part of the current supercycle focused on AI enablers”.
Taiwan ranked second only to Japan in total US equity holdings in Asia. American investors held about US$1.25 trillion in Japanese equities at the end of 2025, equal to roughly 15 per cent of Japan’s market capitalisation, BNP Paribas data showed.
